Need cat help.The girl child's crazy yellow cat needs to be shaved. I told her DUers know stuff.

My daughter's cat is a nice guy but very quirky. He has very thick hair, some curly and fine, the rest long and...yellow. She couldn't get him in to a groomer she knows, so she purchased some used clippers on ebay. They are good quality but may need new blades. Should she trim the long hair first and then do the short hairs?

It's HOT, and he is uncomfortable. We don't have AC. :shrug: It's Colorado. We didn't used to be this hot.

So. Any thoughts, besides getting new blades?

Many thanks from El Gourdo(the cat) and his very concerned person. Personally I would have had him shaved in May, but she was very busy with school in another city. MM

I'm a fan of bikini waxing, myself

i'm guessing that el gourdo is a long hair? the cat we shave most often has medium-length fur, so we're able to just shave it right off. but in his case, i think a trim with the scissors before going after him with the clippers is a good idea. maybe you could check on getting the blades sharpened rather than replacing them?

as i'm sure you know, this is going to be a two-person job and the person doing the holding would do good by themselves to wear gloves for the ordeal (my dad has a pair of thick, leather gloves he uses when he has to stick his hands in the wood stove).

as an aside, you are totally right...it did not, on the whole, used to get this hot in colorado (i'm in the northern front range and it hit 100 today x()

96 in Boulder today. x( Apparently, Denver is going to break a 134-year-old record tomorrow for most days above 90 degrees. Tomorrow will be Day 19, and they're predicting this heat to go well into next week as well. It's still 87 here and It's almost eight-freaking-thirty!

yeah, i know that 30 or 35% humidity isn't much, but, for us (or at least me), it is unbearable. it's still hovering around 90 up here x(

I know I'll later recant this, but... DAMN do I miss winter right about now... x(

He seems not to mind the clippers too much, but it was definitely not happy making. Sharpening the blades is a great idea... so who does that?

He was a barn cat who was run over by a car and brought to the vet, what a big step that was. But he really likes guys and can be quite personable. So the vet told him how much it would cost to fix him and the guy paid her to put him to sleep. So... she fixes his broken hip, puts in a pin and keeps him as an office cat. The girl child volunteered in the office, and you can figure out how that went. He is neurotic and is on kitty prozac on an irregular basis, but he is really a nice cat. And he has been teac hing guys that cats are not a bad thing. That they can be smething like little dogs, which is exactly what he acts like.

Thank again for your help. MM :hi: Got fans?

i've got a little girl kitteh who thinks she's a dog. it's so adorable.

i just did a quick google search for getting the blades sharpened and this place looks like it can do it: http://alwayssharpedges.com/Scissors___Shears.html

and howdy neighbor...another foco resident here. i've got my ceiling fan running, plus the four window fans that are always on. as much as i hate the heat we have, i'm so grateful that it cools down at night...i'm usually freezing come 6 a.m. and have to pull the blanket on :D

because I want to live. I take him to his vet and let them get wounded.

But I do know that you should not shave the head and tail. They use this hair like they use their whiskers; to get a sense of their surroundings. My vet also leaves the hair on the legs but i don't know if that is a preference of theirs or what.

And they clip Abbie fairly close but not to the skin so I would also use a 1/4" or 1/2" guard on the shaver.

This is mainly for comfort. He mats and knots and gets very hot. So belly first, we will go from there courage intact...I hope. :)

as i said upthread, there is a cat we shave with some regularity. her fur is weird, and no matter how much we brush her, she winds up with a solid (and i mean solid) mat that runs from the base of her neck to the base of her tail. it impedes her ability to clean herself and makes her generally miserable, she is so much happier after we shave her.

but, even though we shave the big mat off her back, she has a hard time keeping herself clean, which, when combined with the way her fur is, leads to matting back there. the mats retain the urine, which has led to an infection before in addition to her leaving little urine spots all over the carpet and furniture. as much as she hates it when we shave her, which we do very carefully, there is always a marked improvement in her mood after we do so.

If she really feels like she has to do something, brush her. Gently. I'd think that clipping the cat would make the cat rather...testy. And, well, I just wouldn't.

She could always get one of those mister thingies that I've seen around lately. The cat might at least try to play with it and, in the process, cool off.

For what it's worth, we've had cats with long, thick hair in the summer and they've been okay. Maybe a little uncomfortable but not as uncomfortable as they would if we'd clipped them.

I think it is more how and who. He has tolerated it, and again with another groomer...not so much. That is why she wants to try it herself. And getting in with the good people is hard right now.

Hope you can give him a trim without getting too badly mangled.

He is a cat after all. But the fat, and he is, is ermmm...dare I say, most hilarious. At least at first. But comfort rules.

In the past I have trimmed my longhair cat for the summer, but the dog clippers were no good at all so I used a scissors. It did get the job done although it was not pretty, but I did nick her and it seemed very small so I was not concerned. The next day, however, that little nick in her skin had exploded to the size of a quarter. Subsequently a groomer told me that a cat's skin is very thin and that if it is nicked the size of the wound will tend to explode and get much bigger. I'm not doing it again, I'll leave it to a professional.

This is coming from purr-sonal experience. One of my (late, great) cats, a Maine Coon named Sylvester, had to be knocked out to be groomed because he had allergic dermatitis.

we shave our cats in the summer all the time..mine actually don't mind it at all, but they end up so uneven haha...what they don't like so much is the bath afterwards, but they get over it.

shave on a high setting, not skin nicking close, go against the grain of the hair a little at a time, don't get real close to the skin. I don't shave their heads or faces, just the back and sides and the legs, they are kinda funny looking when we are done, we didn't say we were pros at this LOL. Even with the A/C mine are still hot in the summer, and they act like they feel better after they have been cut

Here is my freshly shaved... erm, kitty:



She gets clipped twice a year, because her hair/fur gets too long for even her to groom it properly otherwise, and then she gets tangles and mats. She doesn't much care for the clipping itself, but she is SOOOooo happy afterward! She romps like a kitten again, and is extra affectionate.

So here's my advice:

Confine the clipping area to a small room, like a bathroom. Clear the area of any breakable or hazardous stuff.

Plan to take a lot of time to get the job done. Two or three hours at least.

Let kitty decide how fast the job gets done: Sometimes we get it all done in one long stretch. Sometimes we work on it for an hour or so, and then she'll have no more. So we take a break of a few hours, and go at it again later in the day. Or even the next day.

Use a good quality clipper with sharp blades. Buy the best you can afford, it will pay for itself after a few clippings.

Don't put the clipper on the setting with no length guard, that's one way you're likely to nip or abrasion-burn the skin.

The other way that you're very likely to nip the skin is if you don't pull it taunt (not tight, just so there are no bunched up skin areas) where you are clipping, IOW, you don't want to clip over wrinkles or folds of skin.

That's the big stuff for now. If I think of something else I'll add it.

Good luck!

My vet used to have a lot of long haired cats come in for shaving. Those cats usually had a mess of hair and would not be accepted by groomers.

and ask for the "lion cut"; it gets rid of the fur that tangles but leaves enough to let them maintain a little dignity. My Oberon had to get shaved after the hurricanes of 2004 because we had no power for weeks and he was too hot. The groomer-one of the only ones with power in the area-had a hell of a time with him and swore never again! And Obie had even been sedated! I'd say spring for the vet.